Tigers designate Valverde for assignment

Detroit Tigers pitcher Jose Valverde looks at a ball after giving up a two-run home run to Baltimore Orioles' Chris Davis in the ninth inning of a baseball game in Detroit, Wednesday, June 19, 2013. Baltimore won 13-3. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

DETROIT — The experimenting with Jose Valverde at the major league level is over, as far as the Detroit Tigers are concerned.

Whether or not the experiment of trying to fix his issues carries on elsewhere is up to the 35-year-old reliever.

Friday, the Tigers designated Valverde for assignment, meaning they have 10 days to assign him to the minors, place him on waivers, or work out a trade.

General manager Dave Dombrowski said he’d given Valverde the option of accepting an assignment to Triple-A Toledo to attempt to straighten things out, but had not yet gotten an answer from his former closer.

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“He was open-minded to it. He did not say no to it. But he needed some time to think about it,” said Dombrowski, who met with other members of the organization, before he, manager Jim Leyland, pitching coach Jeff Jones and assistant GM Al Avila gave Valverde the news. “He seemed understanding. I don’t think anybody — I think he knows he’s been struggling. And how do you get that back?

“He seemed understanding of it. Quiet. Noncommittal.

“But I don’t think he — he’s also in a spot where he didn’t say, ‘Gee, I think you’re wrong. And I need to run out of here.’ I think he was taking it in and digesting it.”

Unless the unlikely occurs, and Valverde is claimed off waivers, Tigers will be responsible for the remainder of the $2 million base salary whether or not he stays with the organization.

Might as well try to salvage something by trying to see if he CAN be fixed.

“Well, we think we have a guy that can close games for us, if we get him fixed. The velocity has been fine. Of course, he hasn’t had his split. He’s had command problems. The last couple weeks haven’t been good. Before, he threw the ball fine. And that’s what we’re hoping, we can get him back. We figure we have nothing to lose to try,” Dombrowski said. “Our goal, if he did accept it, would not be to keep him there for an extended time. It would be more a matter of getting him fixed, and see if we can get him back to throwing the ball well, try to get him back here.”

Of course, Valverde could turn down the assignment, and force the Tigers to release him.

“When my time comes to go home, I’ll do it. But right now, not yet. Not yet,” Valverde said Thursday.

Just sending him home is not the way the Tigers would prefer to go, which is why they extended the option of a softer landing.

Always a favorite of of Leyland’s, it was no surprise that he’d prefer Valverde choose to stick it out.

“I hope he stays. I definitely hope he stays. ... Absolutely I hope he stays. The velocity has been good enough, the splitter’s been real inconsistent, the control has been spotty. But it looks like the equipment could potentially still be there. He needs do a little bit more with it so we’re offering him an opportunity,” Leyland said. “It’s obvious that we want him to stay in the organization because that’s why we’re offering this opportunity, if he chooses it. And I would understand whichever way he wants to go, I would respect.”

He’s not the only one.

“It’s sad because he was a big part of our team for a lot of years. Hopefully he can get better to where he can go back to being an elite closer,” Brayan Pena said. “I wish him nothing but the best for him and his family. It’s hard, but baseball is like that — a lot of us have been there.”

If Valverde does indeed stick around, next is the issue of when Valverde might pitch for the Mud Hens, where they’re still grooming the closer of the future, Bruce Rondon. There’s also the issue of whether or not you can ever approximate the adrenaline rush that a big-league closer gets from a save situation, something that makes it hard to work through a closer’s issues at the big-league level, by pitching him earlier in games.

“We’ll just have to take a look at his stuff at that point,” Dombrowski said, noting that the discussions have not even gone far enough to hash out a plan for continuing the experiment in Toledo. “We’ll have to look at his velocity, his movement on his pitches, his command on his pitches, his ability to throw his split-finger, which — when we first brought him back, we thought was really important for him having. He has really struggled with that. Again, I think a lot of it is mechanically related. When Jeff Jones talks about it, his arm angle is a little bit lower than we would like — that’s what we would look for at that time.”

Leyland had already taken Valverde out of the closer’s role Thursday, and penciled in set-up man Joaquin Benoit as the primary ninth-inning option, without naming him the closer.

Having Al Alburquerque, who was recalled from Toledo to fill Valverde’s spot on the active roster, gives Leyland a right-hander to use along with lefty Drew Smyly in Benoit’s old set-up role. Even then, it will be more of a mix-and-match situation, given that Benoit is not considered an everyday option.

“I think the difference for Benoit, as opposed with other closers ... he’s not going to get the ball four days in a row,” Dombrowski said. “That’s just not how he is.”

Is a mix-and-match bullpen good enough, as it stands now?

“We’ll find out. ... It’s not, and people keep — and I understand the bullpen questions, because we’ve all been living through it. However, you live in a vacuum with your own club. If you look out there, right now, there are not a lot of shutdown, lockdown closers out there right now — anywhere. There’s very few of them. And a lot of people have struggled with the back end of their bullpens,” Dombrowski said. “And he (Leyland) does a very good job — I said this last year, during the postseason — I’ve seen him mix and match people, and use them interchangeably to close games and vs. left-handers, right-handers as well as any manager I’ve ever seen.”

Matthew B. Mowery covers the Tigers for Digital First Media. Read his “Out of Left Field” blog at opoutofleftfield.blogspot.com.